2006

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0286 Wednesday, 5 April 2006
From: Bob Grumman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 4 Apr 2006 18:03:22 -0400
Subject: 17.0276 Chettle, Greene, Shake-scene
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0276 Chettle, Greene, Shake-scene
Responding briefly (and publicly) to some of Jeffrey Jordan's comments.
>I grasp your arguments, but I don't find them persuasive. Do you
>grasp my arguments? The second person who went to Chettle
>was more credibly Lyly than S, because it was 1592, and because
>of the description Chettle provided in KH. It fits Lyly quite well,
>but doesn't fit anything known about S at that time.
It fit S because S was insulted by Greene much more than anyone else was
insulted by Greene besides Marlowe. Also, S was a known writer (Greene,
for instance, knew him as writer and actor) and had a second occupation.
Also, what Chettle says seems to me closely to apologize for the
particulars of what Greene said about the Crow, whom I take to be
Shakespeare. Shakespeare, I would add, was close to coming out with
Venus and Adonis, and would very probably have gotten some friends who
were of worship.
>>You did clear up one misunderstanding of mine--you are saying
>>Lyly was offended by being associated with the wrong crowd,
>>and/or with a playwright Greene called an atheist (but there's
>>good reason to believe Greene also called Marlowe a homosexual,
>>which was the part of the Groatsworth Chettle deleted as editor
>>before publication).
>
>Um, yes and no. I'll try to clarify. I'm not saying Lyly was personally
>insulted, at all, by what Greene wrote. Rather, it gave him a
social/political
>problem of being associated with alleged atheists, in print, in
Elizabethan
>England. That led Lyly to approach Chettle, hoping for a way to get a
>retraction, in print, but it wasn't possible because Greene was dead.
Chettle
>did apologize; however, it was not for any personal insult to Lyly,
but rather
>for printing GW, including the letter part which caused the problem.
It isn't
>only personal insults that can call for an apology.
Okay. But it seems to me the crow was much more insulted, and more
likely to have protested, for reasons I've indicated.
>Where do you find in GW any indication that Greene called Marlowe
>a homosexual?
>
>What Chettle deleted from the letter part of GW was most reasonably in
>the part to Nashe. For one thing, despite the statement of affection
with
>which that part begins, it's surprisingly short, and generally
impersonal.
>If one looks in that part, carefully, it's quite odd. Right in the
middle of
>the part to Nashe is a legal definition of defamation, just plopped in.
>Greene was not Nashe's solicitor, or anything of the kind. What has most
>likely happened there, is that Greene, writing to Nashe, wrote something
>objectionably personal about somebody, (Gabriel Harvey would be an
>easy guess,) and Chettle deleted it, and replaced it with the "legal
advice,"
>written in a literary style.
I was referring to to Chettle's statement, "For the first (MArlowe),
whose learning I reverence, and at the perusing of Greenes Bookes,
stroke out what then in conscience I thought he in some displeasure
writ: or had it beene true, yet to publish it, was intollerable." Since
Chettle left in Greene's reference's to Marlowe's irreligion, most
scholars (I believe) think that what he took out was some reference to
Marlowe's pederesty, which other evidence suggests he may have practiced.
I still hope to reply in more detail to your previous post on this.
--Bob G.
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